Time Spent (28 page)

"No...that's boring." The red-haired girl
stood and twirled around the center of his room, giggling. "I just
want to play with you."

"What's your name anyway? You never said."
He stood and extended a hand. "I'm Kevin."

"Hi, Kevin!" She placed the tips of her
fingers in his grasp, holding her hand up as if she were a lady in
a fairy tale. She curtsied, lifting her dress with her other hand.
Then she snatched her hand back and went back to twirling.

"Um. So what's your name?"

She stopped mid-twirl and looked intently
into his eyes. "Do you ever think about time, Kevin?"

"Huh?"

"Time! Like...what it is, what it does, what
it's for...stuff like that." She placed a finger against her nose.
"That stuff's pretty important."

"No..."

"Time's not what you think it is."

Kevin was silent. He wasn't sure he liked
this strange red-haired girl.

"And my real name, well, you couldn't say it
if you tried. Your mouth would twist all up and your tongue would
flop up and down and you wouldn't ever get even a little close. You
can call me Gwendolyn. I'm ever so pleased to meet you."

______________________

Kevin raised his arm and the knife sliced
through his flesh, splattering him with blood.

"Ahh!" He teleported behind the other Kevin
and grabbed him, one arm around his neck and the other, his right
arm, now gushing blood, around the other Kevin's knife-wielding
right arm.

The other Kevin twisted left, smashing him
into the bookshelf. The shelves cracked and collapsed, raining
framed photos and other knickknacks down on Kevin's head. Thanks to
his power, the objects slid away without touching him. The other
Kevin leaned forward then slammed backward, shoving Kevin into the
broken wood and brick. Again, Kevin's power protected him, the
broken wood sliding off his back.

The other Kevin vanished from his grip and
reappeared facing him. "Guess I'll have to do the damage myself!"
He plunged the knife toward Kevin again, but this time Kevin
disappeared, cracking open a portal between worlds.

He landed in another alternate world, very
close to the one he had left. He was in the Lloyds' house, only
this time there was a different woman in the pictures with Brian
Lloyd, and no child at all.

"Who are you?" a voice said.

Brian Lloyd stood from the couch, facing
him. Kevin placed a hand over the gash in his right arm, trying to
stanch the flow of blood. It stung badly.

"What are you doing in my house?"

"Sorry," Kevin said. "Just passing
through."

Another portal cracked open and the other
Kevin stepped through. "Where do you think you're going?"

"What the hell is going on?" Brian backed
away from the two of them.

"Be with you in a minute, Dad," the other
Kevin said.

Kevin opened another portal and leapt
through, but the other Kevin leapt after. He seized Kevin's
bleeding arm and pulled him close, grappling with him. They fell
through world after world. For a time, there was still a house,
though it became larger or smaller, with similar or different
families living inside. As they struggled the landscape shifted
around them, growing farther and farther from the reality they'd
known. The fought on worlds where the house had been burned down or
destroyed in an earthquake, or never built at all. Their struggle
took them through worlds where rainforests grew or icy glaciers
covered the land. In all of them, the two Kevins fought over the
knife, swinging punches into each other's faces, blood covering
them.

______________________

"God didn't heal you," Zachary said. "I
never got to ask him, his love never went into you. You just got up
all on your own."

Kevin stood, looking defiantly back at
Zachary.

"Okay, I guess you got me, Corky. Life goes
on!" He spat in Zachary's face.

"I don't know what that means," Zachary said
as he wiped the spittle off his cheek. "But God sent me to stop
people like you."

"Oh WAKE the FUCK UP, you FUCKING
TARDMONSTER!" Kevin threw his arms wide. "You ARE people like us!
You always WERE, she SHOWED ME! Dude, you hit the jackpot and you
don't even know it! All this time you go around with all this hokey
Bible crap your dad shoved down your throat, and it turns out the
most powerful goddess in the universe is your MOM!"

Zachary paled, his thoughts turning to the
vision the red woman had shown him before his fall from the
rooftop. "No..."

"Oh yeah, and she's about to fuck this place
UP. You better get on the right side, like now!"

"Your mom?" Becca put a hand to her head.
"Your...wait, what? What the hell is he talking about?"

Simon released Carl from the grip of his
invisible hands. "That's why I saw him kneeling to her, in my
vision."

Brandon activated his power, whizzing across
the room to stand in front of Kevin.

"Everyone stop. Just stop. This isn't Kevin,
this is someone else and whoever or whatever he is, he's trying to
tear us apart." Brandon said. "Who are you?"

"I'm the only Kevin left, Nerdboy."

______________________

A woman approached him, stepping down as if
walking down an invisible flight of stairs to the rooftop. She had
flowing red hair and blood red eyes.

Except...this was no human woman.

Kevin's eyes revealed the truth. She also
had something different inside her. She also was out of synch with
Kevin and the rest of this world. Looking down, Kevin saw the same
something inside him. He was as different from the others on the
rooftop as he was from her.

She's not from this world, he realized.
Neither are these other kids, and neither am I.

The red woman stood before him now. She was
more than any of them, Kevin knew that. She was timeless, ancient,
and powerful. Energy coursed through her the likes of which he had
never seen and could never understand.

She peered at him as if examining an insect
under a microscope.

"I HAVE COME TO BRING THE END AS
PROMISED."

Kevin didn't understand. "Promised? Promised
to who? Who are you?"

She looked around at the others. "YOU ARE A
FAILED EXPERIMENT. THESE OTHERS BRING MY PLAN TO ITS CLOSE. YOU
CANNOT INTERVENE."

Failed experiment? Kevin shook it off and
stepped up, standing in her face. "Whatever you are, you can't hurt
me. I'm closing this rift before you do any more damage."

Her red eyes flared impossibly bright. "NO,
INSECT. YOU WILL NOT."

She brought a hand up and placed it against
his chest. Energy poured from her, but it broke around Kevin like a
waterfall against the rocks, pouring around and past him to fizzle
uselessly in space.

Kevin realized he had closed his eyes and
held his breath without even knowing it. He opened his eyes and
breathed in, letting it out through pursed lips. "Yeah. That
doesn't work on me, sorry."

"THE INSECT ROARS, YET TO THE TITAN ITS
ROARS ARE LESS THAN WHISPERS."

"Um, yeah. So I'm closing this rift now."
Kevin raised his arms again and concentrated.

The rift began to contract.

"THE RIFT CANNOT BE FULLY CLOSED WHILE MY
EMISSARIES REMAIN IN THIS WORLD. THE TIME OF THE TYRANT IS AT AN
END."

By 'emissaries', Kevin guessed she meant the
others around the rooftop, the kids whom he had not seen
before.

"Thanks for the tip," he said. "I'll take
them back to their own worlds next then."

Her eyes flared. "YOU CANNOT IMAGINE THE
EONS I HAVE LIVED IN THE VOID, HELD OUTSIDE YOUR WORLD ONLY BY THE
BARRIER OF TIME. ALREADY THE RIFT HAS SHATTERED THE BARRIER. TIME
CANNOT PROTECT YOU. TIME CANNOT SAVE YOU."

"You're some kind of god, I get that." Kevin
concentrated. "Now I'm closing this rift."

The rift contracted, growing smaller and
smaller. As it closed, she seemed to fade or withdraw, as if she
was a projection on a movie screen, and he was closing the window
to the booth.

"ITS WORLD BREAKS AROUND IT, YET THE INSECT
SEES NOTHING, IT KNOWS NOTHING. THE CRACKS IN TIME ARE ITS
UNDOING."

"What the fuck ever." Kevin clapped his
hands together and put the last of his energy into the final
sealing of the rift.

The red woman vanished.

Once the rift was closed, the red woman
gone, and the weather died down, Kevin explained to the others what
he had to do.

______________________

"Imagine you were inside a prison," the girl
said, her hands describing the shape of walls in the air. "Like
your room!" She laughed. "Yeah, that's it! Just like your room, a
prison that you could never leave."

Kevin folded his arms and waited for an
opportunity to get her to leave.

"Now imagine TIME is the prison wall. You
used to get to do whatever you wanted outside for as long as you
wanted and no one could tell you to come in, EVER. But this mean
old man came and threw you and your friends into this prison made
of time, and you were stuck there and couldn't get out. It's not
fair!"

He nodded.

"Outside, no one can see the prison, because
it just looks like regular old time to them, just running and
running in one direction and never giving them a chance to see
what's really going on outside. They don't know you're in the
prison and you'd do ANYTHING to get out again. So you chisel and
chisel at the wall for ever and ever! And ever and ever and ever!"
She rubbed her fingers over the textured surface of his wall. "It
seems like you'd never get through, it's so thick, but you keep
doing it and doing it and FINALLY you make a thin place where you
can break through."

"Um, hey, so...I need to..."

"Just wait." She placed her hands on his
shoulders. "I'm almost finished." She smiled. "Only time's not like
stone walls, it doesn't just make a hole you can crawl through.
Time's all connected together, so one hole makes all of it fall
apart. So you're still in your prison, and you can see the outside
is all messed up, like one part isn't touching another part
anymore. The people outside still don't know it's happening, they
don't see the same things you do, but you can see them just fine.
You can jump from one part of the old wall to another, no problem,
but to them it's like you're jumping around back and forth in time
like magic! Isn't that funny?"

Kevin frowned, not sure if it was funny or
not.

"It is, TRUST me." She chuckled, but then
grew serious. "You can't fix it, if you fixed it the prison would
be back together and you'd get stuck again. You HAVE to let it all
break and fall down so you can make it back like it used to be,
where you could be outside all you want. You see that, don't you
Kevin?"

"I guess."

"Good." She placed a gentle kiss on his
cheek. As she leaned in close, Kevin closed his eyes. "Because the
end is closer than you think, Kevin. And you picked the wrong
side."

He opened his eyes, ready to expel her from
his home by force, if necessary, but the girl was gone.

______________________

Kevin landed in a grassy meadow. Sun was
shining down on him, birdsong in the air. No one was around nearby.
There were no structures within sight, just an endless grassy
plain, dotted by the occasional tree. There was a sharp pain in his
midsection.

Sometime during the fight, the knife had
punctured his belly. The wound was deep. Blood welled forth,
staining his shirt and jeans so dark red they were almost black.
Too exhausted to keep jumping between worlds, Kevin stood there in
the grass, looking down on himself.

"This is it, then." The other Kevin stood
before him. "Fair credit, though, buddy: I never expected it to
last this long."

This can't be happening. Nothing can touch
me. No one can hurt me.

Kevin lifted his blood-soaked hands and
stared dumbly at them. He felt cold, sick.

"Nothing seems real anymore. Tell me,
please. Is this really happening?"

"Yep."

The knife landed in his chest with a hard,
horrible crunch, the other Kevin's hand driving it to the hilt.
Kevin felt arms around him, lowering him to the ground. He couldn't
breathe, couldn't think. His vision swam. Lips near his ear then,
and a whispered voice: "Welcome home, Kevin."

Kevin tried to speak, but coppery blood
filled his mouth and all he managed was a gurgle. He felt hot
liquid run from the corners of his mouth to the back of his
head.

The other Kevin stood. "I hate to run, but I
have an appointment with your little friends."

His shadow loomed over Kevin for a moment
before it vanished. There was only the sun in his eyes and the
sound of birds overhead, and then there was nothing at all.

______________________

"What does that mean?" Brandon advanced on
him. "What did you do to him?"

"It doesn't even matter," Kevin said. "He's
gone and he's not coming back. And honestly, you stupid little
waste, that's the last thing you should be worried about. You
should be worried about HER."

Brandon grinned. "The real Kevin would know
she can't come back. He told us what happened on the rooftop
wouldn't happen again as long as the people from the other worlds
were returned to their reality."

Kevin laughed. "Guess it sucks that I
BROUGHT THEM ALL BACK BEFORE WE EVER GOT HERE THEN, HUH?"

An explosion of force ripped the walls
around them away, throwing them to the winds. The sky above the
base had darkened, and ringing the area in which they stood were
eight figures: Tommy, Russell, Amber, Brock, Tiffany, Marcus,
Katie, and Aaron. Sparks leapt between them, building into arcs of
energy that fired into the sky.

"How is that possible?" Becca looked at them
in confusion. "I didn't sense them!"